Billy Ray: Yep. That boy didn't have a harmful bone in his body. He wouldn't even eat things that were all ready dead for Gods sake.

Mary Jane: BILLY RAY you apologies right this minute!

Billy Ray: Sorry Lord for using your name like I did.

Interviewer: So Ray was pretty much useless when it came to hunting! But, let me ask you this, in the time he lived at home, before striking out on his own, did either of you ever witness him doing anything harmful to any creature at all? You know, like cats or dogs in the neighborhood?

Billy Ray: Nope, not a darn thing.

Mary Jane: Me neither, in fact it seemed that everyday he was bringing something that had been hurt home and always trying to nurse it back to health.

He was never very successful at it and every time one

of the animals would die, no matter how small and insignificant it was, you could see him become more and more depressed and obsessed about them always questioning God's will about why things died. I think personally that's when he started having all those emotional problems.

Interviewer: Emotional Problems? What ones were those?

Mary Jane: Primarily it was low self esteem. He would always mope around for days on end when one of the animals he was trying to help died. Always muttering under his breath things like "nobody loves me that's why they are always dying and leaving me" or ""nobody loves me that's why I'm always being locked up in the closet." It wasn't to long after this that we started sending him to see one of those student psychiatrists. But he couldn't really help so social services help us find Dr. Johnson, who worked with the county, and he tried to help Ray.

Interviewer: Was Dr. Johnson ever successful in helping Ray?

Billy Ray: Well, were not really sure about that.

Interviewer: Why is that Billy Ray?

Billy Ray: Because they pumped him so full of pills that he couldn't help but be happy!

Mary Jane: Well now Billy, that's not entirely true.

Interviewer: Mary Jane could you please explain?

Mary Jane: Well when Ray was away one afternoon, around his fourteenth birthday, I decided to do a little spring cleaning. When I got to his room I was going through the closet, throwing out old shoes and things but when I stood up I bumped my head on a shelf. The collision dislodged a shoe box which fell to the floor and opened up spilling out about a years worth of pills.

Needless to say I was a bit surprised and taken back that he wasn't taking his meds so I gave his room a good looking over and when I was done I had found about two and a half years worth of prescriptions hidden throughout the room.

Interviewer: And what did you do about this?

Mary Jane: I confronted him of course. We had a long talk about it and he told me that he didn't need the pills because talking with Dr. Johnson was helping him and the only thing the pills did was make him feel strange. So I told him, Fine you stop taking them, after all it been nearly three years already, but you better not start bringing half dead animals home and talking about death again it woul... Billy Ray where are you going?

Interviewer: I'm not sure Mary Jane but he seemed to be becoming more and more upset as you continued talking just now about the pills.

Mary Jane: Great, just great, and he wonders were the boy gets it from. Please excuse me for a moment I'll be right back.

As my crew and I waited inside the trailer we couldn't help but smile and snicker as we heard quite a lot of yelling coming from outside the trailer. Then among Billy Ray's yelling and Mary Jane's shrieks we could hear Billy Ray's truck door slam shut, start up then speed away.

We sat there in silence, the smiles still on our face, and I thought that it was nice to see that even though the worlds all gone to hell, something's never changed.

A moment later the screen door burst open and the trailer rocked from side to side as Mary Jane came into the trailer, ran across the room and locked herself in one of the backrooms.

I looked at my crew and shrugged my shoulders and said " Well guys lets pack it up, looks like the interviews over."

As we piled into the van I thought to myself that the interview had gone rather well and hadn't been a complete waste of time. We ended up getting some pretty interesting history on Ray that could explain some of his anti social behavior and we were lucky we were there when we had heard about cousin Clyde. Chances were he was bit by a zombie so I decided that we should pay him a visit before he turned so we could get some more background information about Ray as well because it was Clyde's house that Ray had seemed to spend much of his childhood at.

It was getting late into the morning so we decided to grab an early lunch before heading across town to do our next interview and we stopped at what was once a bustling dinner, set in the middle of the financial district.

As we sat down I looked out the huge reinforced plate glass window into the city and was still surprised that even after three months of living with the carnage that we endured daily, how empty the streets were, especially at this time of day.

Several months ago this would have been choked full of people on the sidewalk or in the cars, all going about there individual errands, each more important than the others. But now between the outrageously high death toll and the evacuation, the city seemed more or less like a ghost town.

Nearly nobody walked the streets any longer, except for an occasional zombie or two and the cities newest task force, The Clean Up Crew.

As we sat in the booth discussing how we wanted to approach the interview with Charles Slouchowski, the head grounds keeper at the recently renamed "They Staydown Cemetery", a zombie came casually stumbling across the street and collided with the window leaving a streak of filth and gore upon it.

Let me take a moment here and explain something to you about zombies. Zombies in general are not as you have seen them commonly depicted in movies or in books. The movies and books got it correct that they are not fast and that they are stupid but they do not just eat you for the brains. They will eat any part of you happily as long as it is in reach of there hands or there gapping mouths.

As a general rule a zombie is a solitary creature and they move really, really slow and they are very clumsy so it's almost impossible for one of them to sneak up on you. Because of being clumsy and stupid they are not coordinated enough or smart enough to utilizing things that are laying about as a weapon which makes dealing with the lone zombie an easy thing to do.

The only time you will see them traveling about in a large group is if they had all just suddenly died together, say in a bus crash, or if they are very, very hungry. But let me just say this again, because they are dumb and slow you can usually just scare them off even in small numbers.

That being said I watched the zombie in morbid fascination, only slightly appalled at its appearance, as it continued to bounce of the front window until a waiter eventually went outside to try and chase it away with a broom, hitting it repeatedly upon the head and buttocks until it finally left.

Like I said, not much like the books or movies at all.

About twenty minutes later we were paying for the meal when we heard a shot ring out and echo off the empty streets and abandoned buildings.

The gunshots, as well as the zombies, were now an everyday occurrence that anyone who chose to still live in the guarantee zone has come to live with.

The gunshot had given me an of what our next show could be about and I made a mental note to locate some of the men and women that dedicated themselves to eliminating the zombie menace and interview them, The Clean Up Crew.

There job was simple, one group would search outwards in a sweeping move killing all the zombies that they could scare out into the open by making a lots of load noises. A second group would bring up the rear in large flat bed trucks and collect the twice dead bodies and bring them to the incinerator sites that were located throughout the city. In this way they hoped to have the city free of zombies before the end of the year, just as long as we could keep the new zombie body count down.

As I climbed back into the van I thought it all seemed pretty interesting and I that it would defiantly make for a good program.

We drove through the city, periodically having to swerve and weave through abandoned cars and try to miss the occasional zombie. In the beginning of the outbreak it had been fun to just run them over but not too many people did this anymore for two really good reasons.

The first being you really couldn't tell how decomposed the body you were aiming to hit was and if you got a really old one and you hit it good, then it left an awful mess to clean up. The second reason falls on the heals of the first and that is if the zombie was relatively fresh and you didn't hit it hard enough it might not, well you really can't say die because it's already dead, but stop existing. So when you got to wherever it was you were going and got out of your vehicle there might be a nasty surprise waiting for you still cling onto your vehicle somewhere waiting to take a bite out of you.

Over all it was just safer and cleaner if you just avoided them and left the killing to the professionals.

So we continued along dogging and weaving, occasionally making fun of some of those that were still trapped in there cars until about a half an hour later we arrived at our destination.

As we drove through the wrought iron gated entrance we saw a hastily posted sign that read "When we bury them, they stay buried, and if not, you receive a full refund on services rendered."

Classy, real>

A few minutes later we were at the ground keeper's office, set up and ready to roll.

Interviewer: We know you're busy so thanks for seeing us.

Mr. Slouchowski: First off, call me Slouch, everyone does and secondly, I not as busy as you would expect.

Interviewer: Why is that?

Slouch: Well it seems to me that no one is bothering to bury

there loved ones no more and I don't mean there cremating

them. Nope, they just figure it's cheaper and easier to drop them off outside when they die, figuring they will eventually

get up and wander away in a bit.

Interviewer: Oh my God! Are you serious?

Slouch: Oh yeah, most defiantly. Why just the other day I

witnessed three different families putting somebody out by

the front curb and when I returned later that night the bodies were gone.

Interviewer: Maybe the clean up crew came by and picked

them up.

Slouch: Nope, wrong again. As I was coming into work the next day I saw the same three dead people walking around the neighborhoods were they were dumped off in.

Interviewer: (stunned look of disbelief)

Slouch: Another thing that's becoming popular, a bit dangerous if you ask me, is a dump and run.

Interviewer: I think I already know what that is but would you mind explaining what that is and why it's dangerous to our viewers.

Slouch: Well a dump and run is when ya got your typical

corpse and you can't or won't bury them so, as soon as they

kicked it, you rush them out into a car or truck and get them

as far away from your house and neighborhood as you can, and then dump them.

The reason it's so dangerous is two fold. The first being you just don't know when they are going to wake up and when they do there pretty hungry and you are the first thing they see.

Second reason its dangerous is because it's illegal as all hell and if you get caught doing it, God help you.

Interviewer: So if it's illegal and dangerous then why are people doing it?

Slouch: I can only guess, but a couple things come to mind. First off it's free. Burials were never inexpensive but with all the

new measures we have to take it's jacked the price up

somewhat. Also, why shell out all that money if the corpse is going to dig itself out again. The other thing is, would you want someone you know who has just died hanging out in your neighborhood? Hell no!

Interviewer: Okay, so it's free. I noticed the new sign on the

way in. How is your company proposing to do this, keep

them down I mean?

Slouch: You see what we do is before we dump them into the ground, we wrap the coffin up good and tight with chains, but here the kicker, we also cut the hands off of the corpse after everyone's said there goodbyes and left. No hands, no way of clawing there way back out. It does however get noisy around hear in the evenings.

Interviewer: How's that!!

Slouch: Well, when it's real quiet, you can hear them screaming and moving about underground. Gets a bit on your nerves after awhile.

Interviewer: No I meant about there hands. You mean to tell

me that at the gravesite, after the service and the priest and everyone leaves, someone comes out and just lops there hand off. Do your customers know your doing this?

Slouch: Not anyone, I do it. Its part of the new job description and as for the customers knowing about it, I would imagine

so. The salesmen that sell the lots to these people have to get a signature on a special form, you know like a disclosure.

Interviewer: That seems awful morbid and a bit of overkill don't you think?

Slouch: Hell no. What are you some kind of zombie lover?

Look, with just the chains they would eventually still break

through the lid and then it would be just a matter of time

before they were able to wiggle through the chains. This

extra measure just ensures that there will be no more dead bodies getting up and walking around.

Interviewer: I'm surprised you just don't cut off there feet as

well.

Slouch: That's a different service and its starts at the knees.

Interviewer: (shaking his head slowly from side to side) What

happens if the customer refuses to sign the form allowing

you to perform this service?

Slouch: Well first, if the corpse does dig it's way out then the customer forfeits any rights to a refund and to ensure no lawsuits happen we have them sign a different form for that and secondly, we have a contingency plan in place if the customer doesn't sign the "hand" form.

Interviewer: I'm almost afraid to ask, but what is the back up

plan?

Slouch: Well, they still get the chains but we burry them

upside down. This way, if they if they do get out, they just keep digging in the wrong direction.

I think those are the ones you can hear the loudest because there lost and frustrated and getting pissed that they can't get out. It's kind of funny if you think about it Can you just imagine it, they break out, think heck I only got six feet to go, but instead there lost just digging and digging and digging, always heading in the wrong direction for the rest of eternity, stupid zombies.

Interviewer: Okay, let's change the subject and talk about Ray for awhile, what was he like to work with?

Slouch: Well let me see, Ray simply put, was a weirdo. I think

he was made for this job because all he ever did was speculate and wonder what it was like to be dead and if there was anything after you died.

Any time we would be out fixing up the grave sights or digging the holes he would go on and on and on about it. Many times I had to tell him to shut the hell up but he would never listen.

Interviewer: So this was a daily thing with him?

Slouch: Daily, hell it was hourly! But other than that he was a good guy, hard worker and a trusty friend. Problem was he took all this too seriously and it seemed it was the only thing he ever talked or thought about. He was obsessed.

Interviewer: Anything else?

Slouch: Well, it got so bad with him that he eventually started wondering what it would be like to come back from the dead or even what it would be like to be dead. At this point I really started worrying about him and started watching him closely, making sure he wasn't suicidal. Then one day he caught me staring at him, apparently this was not the first time either, and asked me what I was doing. I felt I owed it to him, so I explained.

Interviewer: How did he react to that?